


Church of the Old God

by thedevilchicken



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Anal Gaping, Anal Sex, Bulges, Choking, Comeplay, Cults, Deepthroating, Desperation, Developing Relationship, Docking, Drug-Induced Sex, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Large Insertion, M/M, Mild Painplay, Multiple Orgasms, Old Gods, Oral Sex, Other, Overstimulation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Religion, Rimming, Sex Pollen, Size Kink, Stomach Bulge, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Testicle Bulge, Throat Bulge, Urethral Play, Wrecked Asshole, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-03 21:05:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12756198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Steve decides to save Bucky's life but Bucky decides to save Steve's. The price for that is a return to a place Steve's tried to forget they've ever been to - a village in a valley that doesn't exist on any map, that has a deep, dark secret.





	Church of the Old God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



> For heeroluva - I really hope you enjoy, if that's the word for it! :D
> 
> If you just happened across this and thought you'd give it a try, _please_ heed the warnings and take a look at the tags. I'm 100% not kidding.

At first, he didn't know where they were going. 

He guesses it was because he'd been fading in and out of consciousness for days by that point, only seeing the roads they were driving down in glimpses through the dirty passenger side window. He'd been hurt pretty badly, his own stupid fault, and Bucky was still public enemy number one so somewhere maybe three countries back Steve had begged him not to go find a hospital. He told him to keep on driving instead and he said he'd be okay, too, except they both knew he wouldn't because not even his crazy physiology could bring him back from something like this without a helping hand along the way. 

He was on his way out. He was circling the drain. Maybe they could've saved him in an ER someplace in Europe and maybe they couldn't have but he was sure as hell going to save Bucky. Someone had to. He needed it to not be HYDRA. He'd've died for that.

At first, he didn't know where they were going and he figured it didn't matter as long as they were only pulling off of roads so Bucky could grab a few hours' sleep or pump their latest borrowed vehicle full of gas while they left the old one tidy in a highway service station parking lot. He didn't know where they were going; they'd gotten maybe as close as three miles away when they bounced through a pothole and the dirty water washed a streak of dirty window clean enough to see through and _then_ he knew. In a sick, heady rush, he knew exactly where they were, and what they'd find ahead. 

"Don't," he said, more of a dry, ugly croak than a word. Bucky didn't even turn his head but Steve couldn't sit himself up straight, couldn't even hold his own head up, let alone make Bucky listen. 

"Don't," Steve said, but it sounded weak even to him. It almost didn't sound like he meant it at all.

When he woke up again, he could see the church through the window.

And now, here they are.

\---

The day they found the church wasn't a good one. 

It was winter then, just after first light, and snow was falling thickly, though the trees took care of some of that. They were behind enemy lines, totally cut off from reinforcements, and they'd been running for their lives through the whole damn night, stumbling over tree roots, getting scratched up by branches while the dogs barked and the Germans laughed. He remembers when they saw the steeple through the trees; they stopped there just long enough to look at each other, bent over hands to knees and panting, almost sick they were so breathless and pumped full of adrenaline. Bucky nodded so Steve nodded and they picked up the pace again. It was a shot, at least. It was the best shot at living that they'd had in hours. They ran. 

The steeple was at the top of a tower that was way higher than they'd thought or than a church in the middle of nowhere had any business being, Steve thought, as they fell. One second they were running and the next they were over the edge, tumbling down a hill that had just enough of an angle that they couldn't call it a cliff and into a valley below. The church rose up above them, huge and silhouetted against the sun and the snow that swirled around it but didn't seem to touch the ground, practically a cathedral and that didn't seem right but once the fall was over, Steve didn't get to consider that. Bucky was bleeding - a bone had broken in his forearm, snapped up and punctured the skin, and he looked sick to the stomach as he eyed it.

"Can you stand?" Steve asked. 

Bucky grimaced and he stood, and Steve figured he was about to say something witty or dumb or simultaneously both, but then the big wooden church doors swung open and whatever Bucky's thought was must've died away. A priest stepped outside, stopped and looked hard at them both. They could hear the Germans' dogs behind them, up the bank that was basically a cliff. It'd take them some time to find a safe way down, Steve guessed, but they weren't far behind. They were putting the village in danger. They needed to get out of there, or at least get out of sight. 

"Venez," the priest said, after a long, tense moment, and he waved them over toward the church. Steve looked at Bucky and Bucky clenched his jaw as he clamped his hand down over his bleeding forearm. They went with him and he closed the doors behind them. The Germans never knocked, never came calling at all; Steve hates that he never asked himself why. 

"Venez," the priest said again once they were inside, waving them on down the aisle between the rows of neat wooden pews, through the nave. There was a man and a woman on their knees at the head of the aisle, scrubbing the stone floor by the altar, and they paused to look up as the priest led the two of them by. Steve apologized for the blood Bucky dripped on the newly-scrubbed stone in a kind of flustered, sorry Franglais and they both smiled kindly and went back to their work - in a second or two, it was like there'd never been blood there at all. Somehow, that was unsettling as it was reassuring.

They moved on, through the east transept that was another style completely but the whole building seemed to be that way, styles on styles on styles one on top of the other till it was almost hard to tell them apart. They went down a short corridor, quickly. In the priest's vestry after that, out of sight of prying eyes, behind a door that the priest bolted shut behind them, Bucky took a seat and cursed as Steve shoved the broken bones back into place. The priest did a very good job of not looking scandalized by his language, Steve thought, or at least a good job of pretending he didn't understand except Steve was pretty sure he did. He looked like he did, the way he studiously averted his gaze and clasped his hands behind his back. When he did look at the two of them, his eyes were dark and clever and concerned.

Bucky passed out at some point while Steve was fixing up his arm with a small box of gauzes and bandages and pins and ointments and a bowl of water that probably shouldn't have been used to wash away blood. It was probably for the best, considering the nasty break and the fact he had no idea where they were except somewhere in France, probably somewhere in France, but they were close enough to the border that who really knew. 

"Venez," the priest said, again, and Steve pulled Bucky up and carried him out of the small door that the priest opened up onto a narrow, winding path through a tangle of what he was pretty sure were thick old oak trees, though oaks seemed strange for the region. He followed. The priest held the door when they arrived; Steve hauled Bucky into the rectory. 

"Américains?" the priest said, as Steve arranged Bucky on a low couch in the drawing room. Steve paused for a second and then nodded yes, like there was any doubt at all that they were Americans even if they were wearing French civilian clothes and maybe he had it in him to fool a priest after all. "Then you would prefer I speak English?"

Steve nodded again. "Thank you," he said. "I'm sorry about this, Father. We didn't mean to wind up here. I guess we got a little turned around in the woods."

The priest smiled. Now he had the time to really look at him, Steve realized he was younger than he'd thought, maybe forty, forty-five, tall and thin and striking, clean-shaven with dark hair that had started to gray at the temples. He was wearing a cassock buttoned all the way down to his ankles and a collar around his neck and he held out one hand that Steve shook. 

"My name is Deschênes," the priest said. 

"Steve Rogers," Steve replied. 

"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Rogers," said Father Deschênes. "I have a spare room upstairs that you and your comrade may use for as long as you like." 

"Thank you, Father," Steve said. "We won't stay long. We don't want to put you in any danger." 

Deschênes smiled patiently, as if addressing a small child who didn't know any better; Steve didn't question it when he said, "We're in no danger from the Germans here, Mr. Rogers." 

He just took Bucky to the room two floors above them, up a winding staircase, and he laid him out on the neat double bed - he figured they'd shared a bed before so that wouldn't be an issue unless he made it one the way he'd sometimes thought about. And later, the woman from the church brought them food on a tray and a change of clothes. Her name was Marianne, she said, and the guy they'd met, whose clothes she'd brought them to borrow, was Pierre. There were three hundred and seventy-two people living there, she said, and she pointed out of the rectory window and Steve shored Bucky up when he came over to look. There were houses dotted around the valley, and fields and people and animals on the banks of a river and there was not a single patch of snow there that Steve could see. It was idyllic. 

Steve felt safe there, he thought, but he wasn't sure why when the Germans had been so close behind them not so very long ago. He felt relaxed, eating bread and cheese and a glass of milk with Bucky at a table by the window that looked out over the valley, the little houses and the winding river. He felt more relaxed than he had since he'd gone out to Europe and he figured maybe it was because from what he could see the people there were living their lives like the war had never started in the first place, or maybe it was the huge, towering presence of the church helped, or Father Deschênes who seemed so calm and kind and willing to help them. Or maybe it was just that he was there with Bucky and right then they weren't running anymore. 

Bucky smiled wryly and raised his glass of milk in his good hand. 

"Here's to getting lost in the woods, I guess," he said, and Steve chuckled and clinked his glass with his. He couldn't've thought of a better toast for the occasion.

And when Deschênes suggested they both come along to the church festival later on that evening, if Bucky felt up to it, Steve agreed they would. He didn't think it could do any harm, after all.

\---

It was the third night of six in the village's annual _fête du renouvellement_ \- their festival of renewal. 

The parish deacon told them that in halting English as he led them down to the church after dark. He was small and young or at least he looked it - he said his name was Marcel and he'd lived in the valley all his life and the way he said it, with a sort of amused secret smile, sounded like maybe he was older than he looked. He said he loved his home and he loved God, and he seemed nervous but very eager to share. It seemed endearing at the time, as they followed him down the winding path from the rectory to the church to joined the others. Steve couldn't find a reason to be concerned at all, somehow. He knows he should've been. Under normal circumstances, he would've been.

Inside, the church was full of flickering candlelight and a smell that Steve couldn't place, sweet and rich and thick, not that he minded it at all even if it felt like he'd been left to steep in it. Bucky grinned when he looked at him and when they looked around, _everyone_ was grinning, everyone was happy, chattering, excited, relaxed, milling around on the steps and in the foyer and down the aisles, saying hello, shaking Steve's hand and Bucky's hand before they started to take their seats, and it was warm somehow, already, in a way an old stone church really shouldn't've been. The place was huge, like it could have seated a thousand, maybe two, but Steve guessed there weren't even five hundred people there. It was all wrong for the size of the village it served. 

Marcel closed the doors behind them and Steve and Bucky slipped into the back pew. Steve guessed they'd be less obtrusive that way; after all, as welcome as they'd been made to feel, this wasn't their festival. It wasn't any Catholic festival Steve had ever heard of. It belonged to the people in the valley. Of course, they'd never heard of the valley, either.

Father Deschênes stood and took the few steps up to his pulpit, which was surprisingly low. He placed his hands on his lectern and he started to speak and Steve followed along with the rapid-fire French that seemed muffled in the thick, smoky air as best he could, about community, health and happiness, long life. But then the words changed and Steve found himself gripping the edge of his seat. He didn't understand what Father Deschênes was saying. He didn't understand the shape of the words or the way that they sounded or how they seemed to curl into his brain the way they did. He was spellbound. 

He watched when Pierre left the front pew and went up to the pulpit. He watched Father Deschênes move to the top of the steps instead of standing there at the lectern and Pierre parted the front of the priest's long vestments - Steve watched, wide-eyed, as the fabric opened up so easily right from the middle of his chest right down to the ground. Deschênes was bare underneath, complete, and his cock stood out erect, and Steve watched as Pierre's hands moved over Deschênes' hips. He watched as Pierre took Deschênes' cock into his mouth and Deschênes was still talking, loudly, those strange words tumbling out that seemed to mean something but Steve just didn't know what. It was nuts, it was totally nuts, but when he looked around the place the same thing was happening all around them. People were kissing, there were skirts getting hitched up and pants being shoved down and oh God, Bucky grabbed the front of Steve's shirt and Steve didn't tell him no. He didn't want to tell him no. Whatever it was, it was in them, too. 

Bucky kissed him. He pulled Steve to him and he kissed him, roughly, his nails raking bluntly at the back of Steve's neck, and Steve kissed him back, got his hands to Bucky's waist and twisted his fingers up tight in his borrowed shirt. Bucky dragged him up to his feet and Steve absolutely let him do it. Bucky pushed him down over the back of the empty pew in front of them, one hand firm but almost shaking in between Steve's shoulder blades, and he fumbled at Steve's belt uselessly with his other hand so Steve unbuckled it himself and oh God, his head was swimming and his cock was hard and Bucky's hands parted his cheeks and oh _God_ , Bucky leaned down, bit him, rubbed the pad of one thumb between his cheeks, raked under his shirt with his nails. He could feel Bucky's hot breath against his skin and then something else, jeez, oh Jesus, Bucky's tongue teased at his hole, the tip teasing around the rim of it, lapping flatly at it, wet and hot and brilliant and awful. Steve could hear himself making ridiculous, needy, hungry sounds, and Bucky pulled back but those sounds Steve made weren't the reason why. He pressed the head of his cock up against Steve's hole and Steve begged him, he _begged_ him, the words he was saying pretty close to nonsense though they put the sense across, but Bucky was going to do it anyway. He might as well have saved his breath. 

Bucky pushed into him. He gripped Steve's hips and he pushed into him, slowly but surely, while Steve gripped hard at the back of the pew as he felt himself relax inside to take him just the way he'd wanted to for years, since before the war and the serum and all of that. Bucky's hips moved as he gripped him harder and Steve didn't care if he bruised because it'd be gone by morning and honestly, he might've liked it if it hadn't been - he might've liked wearing bruises like Bucky's hands on his skin, underneath borrowed clothes in this strange place that the war hadn't visited. 

Bucky fucked him and the friction hurt but that was fine because he wanted it, he liked it, and _everyone_ was fucking, Father Deschênes with his cock shoved deep into Pierre's throat and Marianne on the floor riding a well-dressed older guy whose name Steve didn't know, delicate little Marcel with his cock in a huge, broad-shouldered farm hand they'd met rebuilding a fallen wall out in the fields. It seemed fine. It seemed right. Bucky came in him, his cock pulsing with it, filling him up with it, and that seemed perfectly normal, seemed perfectly rational. 

Even when the floor shifted, when a tendril of something gray and sinuous and almost snake-like pushed up between the paving stones like the roots of an off-color tree, when a sprawling mass of the things swelled up into the room - some of them thin as bootlaces, some of them thick as his forearm - that seemed to make sense, too. When a man in white threw off his robe and went to it, when he groaned and the things took him by the wrists and ankles, when one of those things pushed its way inside him, that was fine. When he died just a few minutes later, his head thrown back in agonized ecstasy, Steve knew it was just what had to happen. Steve watched it happen, disgusted but euphoric, repulsed but exhilarated. Bucky's cock was still inside him. Bucky's hands were still on him. Steve felt sick and dizzy, his shirt was sticking to his back and at some point he'd come all over the back of the pew and it was dripping off the wood obscenely but God, he'd wanted this for years. He'd wanted _Bucky_ for years. A man was dead on the floor by the altar and all he could think about was how his best friend's cock felt shoved up inside him. 

And afterwards, in the rectory when they'd rearranged their clothes and avoided each other's gaze, Father Deschênes sat down with them in the drawing room just as pleasant and normal and calm as he'd seemed before. Steve felt broken, trying to concentrate on not letting Bucky's come leak out of his asshole and into the upholstery. Bucky's head was in his hands and the break in his arm looked more than halfway to healed already. Deschênes smiled and offered them tea. 

"How did you think we kept the war away?" he said, as he held out a cup in Steve's direction. 

He hell of it was, that seemed completely reasonable.

\---

In the morning, Marianne brought them breakfast. She seemed just as happy as she'd been the day before, like nothing strange had happened at all. Steve guessed that for the people in the village in the valley, nothing had. 

Father Deschênes had explained it to them the night before, calmly and rationally, over cups of tea. God was in the earth, he'd said, underneath the church but stretching out all through the valley, and God cared for them and kept them safe and healthy. God loved them all, he'd told them, and Steve had frowned and said, "Even the guy he killed?"

Deschênes nodded thoughtfully. "Even him," he'd replied. "Perhaps especially him. It's an honor to be chosen."

Steve didn't understand but he'd believed him anyway, somehow, whether that was thanks to the conviction with which he said it or something in the thick, sweet air they'd breathed inside the church that seemed to linger in his lungs. Then they'd finished their tea in oddly companionable silence and after, Steve and Bucky trailed up the stairs to bed. They slept back to back. They didn't say a word about the things they'd done. 

In the morning, after breakfast, Deschênes asked the two of them to go with him. They couldn't see a reason not to, so they did. 

"For most of the year, worship is more than enough," Deschênes told them, as they followed the path from the rectory back to the church, between the towering old trees. "God asks us to love one another and so we do." Steve glanced at Bucky; Bucky's mouth twisted in something not quite all the way to amusement and they both looked away. Steve got the feeling they both knew what Deschênes meant by _love_. 

"But for six days in the winter, he asks a little more," the priest said. He turned the handle on the vestry door and they stepped inside. "We're happy to give it."

Steve was convinced but unconvinced, swinging wildly between the two, and Bucky frowned and they followed him back out through the corridor and into the transept. The stained glass in the window there was brilliant in the morning sun, casting bright colors over the stone floor - it was a huge, stylized oak tree, that much Steve could tell, like the ones outside. They moved on. 

"I was sent here when I was young, relatively speaking," Deschênes told them, as they walked through the nave with a click of heels on stone. Pierre and Marianne were scrubbing the floor by the altar again just like they'd been the day before; Steve supposed now he knew why that was. "My superiors said they had been informed of a shocking lack of faith in the region. They sent me here to found a church. And so I did." He opened a door that led out of the opposite transept and into the dark beyond. He struck a match and lit one of several lamps that were waiting there on a shelf inside the door and a narrow spiral staircase that led both up and down was suddenly illuminated. He went down. They followed close behind. 

"The first stone was laid here eight hundred years ago," he said, his voice echoing down into the dark. "I traveled from Rome. It was a hard journey and I was gravely ill when I arrived. I didn't understand the language that the people spoke but I understood the sentiment behind it. And when I was well again, when I had met God, I laid the first stone and I planted the oak trees that lead to the rectory. The villagers renamed me for them when they grew." 

They wound their way down. They passed three old wooden doors along the way, a corridor that led out into the darkness, and finally, in the echoing of their footsteps, they came to the bottom of the staircase. It was even warmer there than it was above, a dry heat, and sweat stood out down the line of Steve's spine and across his brow; in the lamplight, he could see the same was true for both Bucky and the priest. 

Deschênes opened the door into a vast hall, a vast _crypt_ , full of lamplight with hundreds of markers lining the walls each marking out a different person's resting place. There were names carved on the stones, but the ones nearest to them were worn and Steve could see why; there were people down there, dusting, cleaning, lighting lamps and murmuring words that even at a distance sounded like the things Deschênes had said from the pulpit the night before. 

"Everyone who has died here since I came is buried here," Deschênes said. "To be close to God." 

Bucky was frowning. Steve knew he was, too. And it made sense but it didn't, like there was something in his head telling him it was all just so screwed up and then something else, not so much yelling over it as soothing the thought back down again. 

"It's an honor to be chosen," Deschênes said, like he believed it. 

"Then why is it never you?" Bucky asked, his voice loud and echoing harshly. People turned to look. 

Deschênes shrugged. His cassock rustled around his ankles. "Perhaps one day it will be." 

"So why don't you volunteer?" Steve asked. 

Deschênes looked at him, sharply. "I have," he replied. "I do it every year, but God always chooses someone else." He smiled, sadly, almost privately, as he turned away to look down the long hall of dead, entombed sacrifices. Steve believed him. 

"God has chosen your friend, Mr. Rogers," Father Deschênes said, suddenly, and Bucky frowned harder as Steve's stomach lurched. "We can't let you go. I think you know there's no point running." 

"Take me instead," Steve said. 

He supposed the low rumble underneath their feet meant the god beneath the church agreed. 

\---

That night, Marianne brought a robe to their room, and once she'd laid it out on the end of the bed she threw her arms around him, beaming. She congratulated him while Bucky scowled across the room from a seat by the window, but Steve knew she meant it with absolute sincerity. He guessed so did Bucky, though he'd've probably denied it.

"You know you don't have to do this," Bucky said when she was gone again, as Steve took off his borrowed clothes. Steve had his back to him - somehow undressing in front of Bucky was harder since the serum, since people had started finding him attractive for _what_ he was and never really _who_. The robe was simple, long and white and slightly stiff like starch, hand-stitched, and he put it on over his bare skin like he'd been told to. Bucky stood and went over to him; he pushed him by one shoulder till he turned around to face him and then he tied the three loose ties down the front in neat white bows for him. The wry smile on his face said he knew Steve _did_ have to do this. The Germans hadn't vanished into thin air, after all. The thing under the church was far from powerless. 

"You'll be fine," Bucky said, resting his hands flat against Steve's chest, not quite meeting his eyes, and he forced his smile brighter but Steve could tell it was forced. "You're not like regular guys, right, Captain? You'll be fine." 

"I'll be fine," Steve replied. He hoped that was true. And then Marcel arrived, with a knock on the door. He took them to the church and Bucky peeled away toward the front doors while Marcel led Steve in through the vestry. 

"They don't all die," he said, softly, almost so softly that Steve didn't hear, but then Marcel looked at him. "They don't all die," he said again. "Not all of them. God chose Pierre when he had only been here for three years and now he has been here for sixty. They don't all die." 

Steve nodded. He smiled. He knew Marcel was trying to help but it didn't help because the implication was still there; not all of them died, but most did.

Inside, once Deschênes began to say the words, Steve could feel the people's eyes on him. It made his cheeks burn and he knew Bucky was watching, sitting there at the back with his jaw set, gripping the back of the pew in front of him like his life depended on it. Marcel undid the three neat bows that Bucky had tied and he took the robe and left him naked. The stones were warm under his bare feet and the air was warm against his bare skin but he shivered anyway. He'd had dreams like that sometimes, standing up naked in class at school or in front of everyone at church on Sunday or any of fifty other places, but this wasn't embarrassing like that had always been. It was something else entirely. It made his pulse race. It made his stomach tighten.

Then the paving slabs in front of Steve started to grumble and he watched as one moved, as it was pushed up from beneath and shifted aside with a sound of stone grinding hard against stone, and what was underneath it in the dark was moving. It was writhing, like snakes over snakes, something dreadful and perfect, and Steve probably should have turned tail and run but he didn't move an inch. He stood there, naked, watching as lengths of the thing in the dark pushed up, reached up into the flickering candlelight, coiled around his ankles, around his wrists, around his waist. It held him firmly but it didn't hurt - it was warm, radiating heat that wasn't quite enough to burn, and he didn't feel like he needed to struggle. He was anxious but not scared. He knew it didn't want to hurt him. At the very least, it didn't want him dead. It had never wanted any of them dead. Death was just an unfortunate side-effect. 

Then he felt something hot and slick tease in between his cheeks and he knew what was happening because he'd seen it the night before. He felt it press against his hole and he blushed even more hotly, across his face and his neck and right down to his chest as he felt his cock start to stiffen there in front of everyone, almost four hundred pairs of eyes on his shameful erection and one of those pairs of eyes was Bucky's. He didn't want it but he didn't _not_ want it, and the thing pushed deeper into him, made his breath hitch and his fists clench. It pushed in, slick and deft, and it raised him up into the air by the coils around his waist and and wrists and ankles, spread his arms and legs out wide and pushed in deeper. 

It got thicker as it went, opening him up wider, and he could feel himself stretching and relaxing and taking more, and taking _more_ , groaning with it as the church filled with other groans, other sounds, slick sounds, friction, heat. He could feel it moving in him, filling him up bit by bit, minute by tantalizing minute, filling him till his stomach started to bulge with it, till it felt like one good shove and it would either burst right out of his abdomen or push all the way straight through him. And it hurt, it did, it ached and it tore and it burned and it brought tears to his eyes and made his muscles tremble, but he didn't care because it felt good, too. As it drained him, though what it was draining him of he couldn't even start to say, it felt better than anything else ever had. It felt like bliss. It felt like heaven. It felt like he'd been touched by God. 

Bucky stood up and Steve saw that through his haze. Bucky walked down the aisle, quickly, determinedly, dodging stray feet and arms trailing out from the pews along the way. Bucky walked straight up to where he was, suspended there in front of the gaping hole in the church's stone floor, and Steve almost came just looking at him looking at him, at the way Bucky's cheeks were flushed and his pants were stretched tight over his erection. 

Bucky rubbed himself with the heel of one hand and he dropped onto his knees there on the floor in front of him, looking up at him. Steve watched him shove his pants down over his hips and yank his shirt up to tuck it under his arms and he wrapped one hand around his thick, red cock, the hand of the arm that had had such an ugly break in it just twenty-four hours earlier but was now almost completely healed. He stroked himself as Steve watched, nipping his foreskin over the tip with each forward stroke and Steve couldn't look away - he'd seen Bucky naked before and he'd been circumcised, he knew that - they'd compared notes back when they'd been younger, sixteen, maybe seventeen, when Bucky had met a girl who said she liked a guy to be uncut and he'd dropped his pants so Bucky could see what she meant by that. He remembered Bucky touching him, easing back his foreskin with his fingertips, getting his own cock out for comparison, and Steve got hard and thought Bucky would be totally grossed out but he was intrigued by that, too, if it worked any different to how his did. They'd watched each other jerk themselves off, on their knees in Steve's room, Bucky had taken hold of him and lined them up, tip-to-tip, and eased Steve's foreskin over the head of his own cock like it was science. Bucky had definitely been circumcised. Heck, the last time he'd glanced that way in the bathroom, telling himself he didn't mean to look, he'd been circumcised. The thing under the church hadn't just healed his arm; Bucky's foreskin had grown back in. 

Then Bucky sucked on the first two fingers of his other hand, sucked right up to his knuckles, and Steve watched him reach them back behind him - Bucky's hips shifted as he shoved his fingers up inside himself, right there in front of him. He squeezed the head of his cock and made himself groan and Steve groaned, too, as another of the thing's long limbs snaked down and coiled around his cock, right from base to tip in rings. It stroked him, the tip of it teasing the tip of his cock, teasing _into_ the tip of his cock, just a little, just fractions of an inch, and he came, his come sputtering out around the thing in him, catching Bucky thickly across the face and neck. That was when Bucky came, too, over his hand and against the floor, still riding his own fingers; he gathered the come off hollow at the base of his throat with his free hand and he licked it off and Steve made a kind of strangled sound, his hips bucking as he came again. It hit the floor and mixed with Bucky's. Jesus Christ, if he could've he'd've licked it clean, but he had nothing left. 

When the thing set him down, let him go and withdrew beneath the thick stone floor, Steve collapsed. Bucky was there to catch him. 

Bucky helped him into the rectory, up the little spiral staircase into their borrowed room. He laid him down face-first on the bed because that seemed like the best idea, Steve guessed, considering the way his asshole felt like it was gaping wide open, and Steve didn't complain because when Bucky poured water and started to clean him, when Bucky's fingers brushed against the still-slick rim of his aching hole, it hid the fact he was hard again in seconds. He was pretty sure he could've taken Bucky's hand right up to the wrist without a problem and if he'd been able to speak, he might've asked him to do it. He might've begged him to. He might've begged him to suck his cock while he did it. He might've begged him just to touch him or watch him while he touched himself. He was trembling. He'd've given anything for Bucky to really want him like that, without the old god in the ground driving him to it. 

He fell asleep in fits and starts, shivering as he came against the sheets though all that was left in him was drops, and drops, then nothing. 

He fell asleep wishing Bucky would want him the way Steve wanted him to. He wasn't even thinking about gods at all. He wasn't thinking about monsters.

\---

Father Deschênes brought them breakfast in the morning. It was Marianne's day to dust down in the crypt, he said. They took it in turns, and they took it seriously.

Steve had taken a full twenty minutes to dress himself before that, aching everywhere the way he was, and after Bucky's first offer to help had met with an incoherent grumble, he'd left him to it and just sat there by the window looking out over the valley. It was another warm, cloudy day outside, like the snow had evaporated in the white sky somewhere up above them. Maybe it had. Maybe that was something that the god of the valley did for them. 

They spent the day there in the room, after they'd tried going out for a walk with everything in Steve complaining bitterly about the effort. People came up to him, shook his hand, thanked him, congratulated him, and it was just way too much for him to deal with while Bucky was keeping him at arm's length - it was like being back with the USO, the fake captain with a fake shield and lines to read. So they went back to the rectory and Steve stood at the window and watched Bucky go back out without him. He figured it was better that they not be in the same room anyway, considering all the things they were trying not to talk about. Even when he thought he wanted to, he wasn't sure about it.

He watched the clouds move across the sky. He watched the people in the fields that didn't look like they'd even had the fainted touch of winter. He watched Marcel tending the vegetable garden and Pierre fixing fences down the lane outside, waving to people as they passed by, some walking, some on horseback. He wondered if the god under the church kept the animals alive, too. He wondered how many years they'd been there, learning to do things for themselves, producing everything there themselves except for the occasional thing Marianne said Father Deschênes went out of the valley to fetch for them. He wondered how many years _it_ had been there, if maybe it always had been, somehow, and the notion didn't seem strange to him at all. He guessed maybe it was true. He guessed maybe the god in the earth had let him and Bucky in for a reason.

He watched Bucky walking. The way he moved was different from the others somehow so he knew it was him even when he couldn't really see it was him, and he knew he wasn't looking for a way they could escape even if it might've looked like it with the distances he was covering as the hours ticked by. They both knew, _knew_ , deep down, that they couldn't get out, and besides, it was just two more nights. If they left, someone else might die. Steve could survive it. He had to.

That second night, Steve put on the robe and Bucky tied it for him, then he squeezed his shoulders briefly and headed out the door. Marcel walked him down the path into the church; Bucky was already there, at the back, just like the night before, and Steve stood there, waiting, trying not to look at him, trying not to think about him when there were absolutely more pressing things at hand. Marcel untied the robe and slipped it back off Steve's shoulders. Steve was already hard underneath it, just thinking about what was going to happen. He hated that he was. He didn't want this. Maybe they could've taken the German division. They should've never gotten cut off from the others in the first place. They should never have been there. 

The thing under the church came out of the dark and wound its way around him as the people moaned and groaned and rubbed and teased and screwed. It lifted him up and it tilted him back and Steve remembers thinking maybe that was for the best because all he could see then was the church's vaulted ceiling, painted deep blue and dotted with gold stars that glimmered through the heat haze in the flickering candlelight. It meant he didn't have to see all those hungry eyes on him as the thing pushed inside him, hot and slick and thick and utterly relentless, forcing him open, making him gasp. But he could imagine Bucky watching, seeing his hole stretched out as wide as his forearm was, seeing the way he shifted his hips like he wanted it in him even deeper than that. He did. He wanted it to fill him up till he was almost more it than he was himself. He wanted it to push into his mouth till he gagged and swallowed and his jaw ached and his throat bulged. He wanted it to tease into his cock all the way into his balls till they felt swollen and heavy and twice their normal size. So it did. 

So it _did_. It did exactly what he wanted it to. It pushed into his mouth, and into his throat and he coughed, he struggled, he hated it and he wanted it and he felt it pushing in, filling his throat, stretching till it hurt but it felt right and he couldn't move his head at all and its skin was too tough for him to bite down even if he'd wanted to so all he could do was let his tongue move against it in a kind of mute, meek non-protest. He felt it tease at the tip of his cock, just a thin little tendril, almost wispy at first as it worked its way inside, slick and hot and strange, _so_ strange, but good, _really_ good. Then there was more. It thickened, it stretched him, it made him groan, made his throat around the thing in his mouth, made him clench around the thing inside his hole. He could feel his balls swelling with it, could feel his cock expanding, his body was on fire with pain and need pleasure till he almost couldn't breathe and when he did breathe it was full of that smell, thick and intoxicating like it clung to every part of him, inside and out. And he didn't know where Bucky was, but he knew he'd be watching. He wanted him to watch. He wanted him to get off on it. 

As it was putting him down, when he was utterly spent, he saw Bucky: he was on his knees there in front of him with his cock straining in his hand. 

When it put him down, Bucky was there to catch him. He pressed his face into Steve's neck and he wrapped his arms around him and he rested him down against the stone floor as the thing wound its way away. Bucky rocked his hips against him and that was it, he came against Steve's belly in a hot rush as his breath hitched against his neck. 

"I'm sorry," Bucky murmured, as he wrapped him up in the white robe, after. "God, I'm sorry." Then he hauled him back to the rectory almost like he'd said nothing at all, back up the stairs to their room. Bucky laid him out on the bed and Steve begged, he begged him with whatever he had left and honestly it wasn't much. He didn't even really know what he was begging for except in the light of a guttering candle Bucky tongued the gaping tip of Steve's bruised, aching cock till it felt like he came and came and came but it was soft and dry and it was agonizing and the best thing he'd ever felt and Bucky rested his forehead down against Steve's abdomen while Steve just fucking sobbed and sobbed he wanted it so much. It was too much. It wasn't nearly enough. Every nerve was alight. The feel of Bucky's shirt against his skin was excruciating. The weight of Bucky's hands made him burn. He's still not sure if he fell asleep as much as he passed out. 

Marianne brought them breakfast in the morning and by the time he was halfway through it, Steve didn't even have the energy left to lift his fork. So Bucky helped. 

"We should get out of here," Bucky said, and Steve said, "I know," his voice hoarse and strained and they both knew why, but they didn't go. They played cards with a deck that was yellowed and faded that Marcel seemed happy enough to lend them when they asked, though they had to play with their cards laid on the table at first because Steve didn't have the strength to hold them up. He rallied after lunch but he still had to have Bucky help him move around. He still had to ask Bucky to help, to shore him up when he stood, to spot him while he tried to sit so he didn't just keel right over. He screwed up his face and asked him to help him use the bathroom and Bucky stood himself behind him, wrapped one arm around his waist and wrapped one hand around his cock so he could pee. It was humiliating. It was awful. Somehow he felt like maybe it would've been easier with Peggy Carter than it was with Bucky.

By the time night fell, he could walk unaided but Bucky still helped him put on the robe and walked him down the path to the vestry door, Marcel be damned. Steve's head was already swimming when he got inside. The room was spinning and Deschênes was talking but he could barely even hear it. Marcel took the robe away and he was swaying, he was hard, he was utterly desperate.

That third night, that last night, as Deschênes' words turned to nonsense and the room seemed to shimmer, Steve felt the thing enter him. It held his arms out wide with coils around his wrists and it gathered up his ankles and Steve's own weight pulling him down pushed it up inside him. And Bucky was there, suddenly he was there right in front of him, stripping out of his clothes in front of everyone till all that was left was his tags against his chest. 

Bucky touched him. He ran his hands over Steve's thighs and over his hips and he moved in closer, he ran his hands up over Steve's bulging abdomen, pressing just a little till Steve groaned from it. He ran his hands over Steve's chest, his shoulders, his neck, his stubbly jaw. Bucky kissed him. Bucky pressed his mouth to his while he slipped one hand down to wrap around Steve's cock. He kissed him and he stroked him and he caught his own cock there alongside Steve's and Steve _throbbed_ , his taut hole spasmed around the thing inside him that stretched him open and Bucky's other hand trailed down over Steve's back to tease at his swollen, stretched-out rim with his fingertips. He pinched at it suddenly, sharply and made Steve yelp though jeez, it was mostly out of pleasure. Then he pushed two fingers in alongside the thing as Steve groaned and groaned and groaned against Bucky's mouth. 

He saw the change in Bucky almost immediately when he pulled back far enough. He was touching the thing that was pushed up inside Steve so he guesses that was why it happened but suddenly Bucky was flushed and his pupils were huge and when he pulled his hand back, another of the thing's serpentine appendages snaked around his bare ankle to keep itself in contact and Steve could feel him, oh God, he could _feel him_ , it was like he was right there in his skin with him. Bucky turned and went down on his knees on the church's stone floor and Steve knew what he wanted because it was right there in his head. Steve wanted it, too, but he knew he couldn't give it to him, couldn't've even if he'd been released right then because he knew he wouldn't've been able to stand. So the thing under the church did it instead. It did it for them.

Steve watched the tip of one of the thing's long limbs press up between Bucky's cheeks there right in front of him and when he pulled away again, he could see how slick it'd left him. It coiled itself around Steve's cock and then dropped away; he was slick, too, and he knew what was going to happen and he wanted it, and so did Bucky, urgently, viscerally, so when the thing moved Steve forward, when it guided the tip of his cock up against Bucky's hole, it almost didn't seem strange at all. When it pushed him forward, when it pushed him in, Bucky groaned out loud and pushed back against him. Bucky almost felt cool around his cock after the heat of the thing wrapped around him, but he was tight and slick and pulling tighter every time the thing moved Steve back, pulling him out right to the tip before it plunged him back in. Bucky wanted it, Steve could feel that, and it was complicated and dumb and there were so many things wrong with it but the thing kept going, faster, harder, the sound of Steve's skin on Bucky's almost louder than their breath and Bucky pushed back to meet him, taking him deeper, taking him balls-deep as the thing in Steve writhed in pleasure. 

Steve came in him with an almost tortured shout and Bucky came on the floor and the thing left them there, together, and put itself away again, their connection lost. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead down against the floor. Steve shook. He felt empty. he couldn't move a muscle, except involuntarily. And then, slowly, Bucky pulled himself together. He dressed himself, then he wrapped Steve in the white robe and he took him back to the rectory. He couldn't quite seem to make himself touch him after that, not like he had the night before, not like Steve wanted, not like he needed; he just turned out the light and turned his back and Steve shuddered there on his side, tilted over too far so the head of his cock touched the sheets and made his body try to come again, again, _again_. He must have slept at some point, he thinks, or maybe he just passed out again.

They didn't leave for two weeks after that; they never did escape, they just waited till the festival was over. It took a while for Steve to get even half his strength back afterwards, lying in the bed they'd shared in Father Deschênes' house. He came in sometimes, with a tray of food or just to see how Steve was doing; it seemed like he really did care for the people in the valley, no matter the strange faith he seemed to keep, and while they were there Steve couldn't seem to fault him for that. Bucky seemed to, though he spoke to Deschênes more than he spoke to him. 

They didn't leave for two weeks and once they'd left, they never spoke of that place again. Things went back to normal, like it had never happened. 

Six months later, Bucky was gone. They _never_ spoke about it. Steve's always regretted that.

\---

After the borrowed car stopped in the valley by the church, Steve woke to the sound and immensely strange feeling of his broken ribs cracking back into place. He knew where he was. He knew what was happening. That turned his stomach more than the situation with his ribcage did. 

When he opened his eyes into the candlelight, he knew what he'd see: there was Pierre with Father Deschênes' cock in his mouth, there was Marianne with Marcel's tongue between her thighs, there were the three hundred, four hundred faithful in varying stages of undress and indecency, more people than there'd been before though he'd never figured out how exactly the population grew when Marianne had told him there were no pregnancies there and so no children were ever born. He guessed maybe they were all waifs and strays and runaways, just like he and Bucky were, and maybe they always had been and maybe they always would be, or maybe there were people there who were as old as time, who made Father Deschênes' eight hundred years look negligible and remembered how it all began. But they were all there, the ones they'd known, and whatever kept them young had done just as good a job as ice or cryogenic chambers had. 

And there was Bucky by the altar. He was naked, held up by coils of the thing Steve had thought they'd left behind, coils around his thighs and around his shoulders and his one remaining wrist with his knees spread wide, suspended there as if he was seated in thin air. He had his head tossed back, all his long hair falling back, but that didn't mean Steve couldn't see the look on his face like it hurt, like it was the worst thing he'd felt or maybe the best thing and he wasn't sure which except maybe it was both. Steve knew that feeling. He'd tried quite hard to forget it. 

Steve could see one long arm of the thing under the floor pushing up into Bucky. He could see Bucky's cock standing up huge and red and hard, wet at the tip and straining up toward his bulging abdomen. He could feel his own cock stiffening quickly in response to it, pushing at the stiff denim of his jeans. He could feel himself healing up inside, at least enough for him to drag himself out from his pew there at the back and up the aisle without falling on his face. He skidded onto his knees, pulled off his bloody shirt to see the fading marks of gunshot wounds across his shoulder and a round popped out and clacked against the floor. He unbuckled his belt, desperate, lungs full of that same old air; he pushed his jeans down to his knees and sat back on his heels, his cock straining up in the warm church air, and Bucky looked at him. 

He watched him when he touched himself and the thing brought him down, brought him closer, moved him through the air till he was so close Steve could have reached out and touched. When the thing coiled itself around Bucky's cock and stroked, it only took seconds till he came, moaning with it, all over Steve's hands and his cock and his balls, dripping with it. Steve almost came himself, felt his stomach pull tight, felt his cock jerk, but he reached his come-slicked fingers back and shoved the first two up inside himself. His balls twitched up and he came like that, pulling tight around his own fingers like they were Bucky's cock instead. He'd thought about it over the years. He'd brought himself off thinking about that first night when Bucky had bent him over and put his cock in him almost like it as him that wanted it and not the old god of the valley. 

And when the thing withdrew, when it wound itself away into the ground beneath the church, Steve was there to catch him. He was there to wrap him up in the white robe and take him away, out of the church.

The room in the rectory was the same as it had been before, with just a fresh coat of paint or two to show that any time had passed at all. He lay Bucky down on the clean white bedspread and Bucky watched him do it, his eyes glazed the way Steve figured his own must have been, way back when. He was hard. His eyes were begging and maybe Steve knew better than to do it but he knew what that was like, he knew how much he'd needed it, how Bucky felt; he leaned in and he hooked one thumb around the base of Bucky's cock and he sucked hard just underneath the head, then lower, lower still till he was sucking at looser skin at Bucky's balls instead, till he was sucking them into his mouth, first one and then the other, as he wrapped one hand around Bucky's cock and stroked. 

Somehow, it wasn't enough. "Please," Bucky said, his voice dry and cracking. "Oh God, Steve, _please_." So he moved him. Bucky did his best to help him but he was sapped of strength just like Steve remembered being so he propped him onto his knees, shoved the long bolster pillow in under his chest and Bucky moaned as his hips twitched. He moaned as Steve nudged his thighs apart, as he parted his cheeks with his hands and rubbed the swollen rim of his slick, gaping hole with the pads of his thumbs. He shoved down his jeans and he stroked himself sharply and it didn't take long because he was already hard and he came against the dimple there at the base of Bucky's spine, pushing the head of his cock down there so his come dripped down thickly over Bucky's hole. 

Three fingers went in easily after that and Bucky's breath was hitching, his muscles were trembling as Steve added a fourth, as he tucked his thumb and oh God, he was up to his wrist in moments, slick with what remained of the thing in the church and with his own come, with Bucky's hole straining to pull tight around him. He reached between Bucky's spread thighs and stroked his soft, spent cock and Bucky's hole twitched tight around his wrist. Bucky came again. Bucky came _again_. There was nothing left for him to give when he came because the thing in the church had had it all, but that didn't stop his body trying. 

Steve stripped and washed them both when he was done, wiping come off his own skin then following the trail of hair over Bucky's abdomen almost nervously with the warm, wet washcloth to swipe over his cock and make him shiver. Bucky watched him, flushed and limp but avid with it, almost smiling. 

"I know I'm screwed up in the head, Steve," he said, "but I don't think you need to be coy with me after this, okay?" 

"So we're talking about it this time?" Steve asked. 

"Yeah." Bucky nodded as best he could, which wasn't much. "I think we both kept a lot of secrets," he said. "I think we need to quit that now." 

Steve couldn't say he disagreed.

He nudged him up onto his side after that and he held him from behind, one hand slung over Bucky's waist and wrapped loosely around his cock, and that's where they are now. He remembers exactly what it was like when they were here before. He knows exactly what Bucky's feeling now. He'll need to come again and maybe Steve didn't know how to ask for that back then, and not having it was agony, but Bucky won't have to find the words if he doesn't want to because Steve knows what he needs. But somehow he gets the feeling Bucky won't be coy about it, either.

"Thanks, Buck," Steve murmurs, against the back of Bucky's long hair, because he knows he's saved his life tonight, by coming here, by doing this, by remembering the way and offering himself. He just wonders what all of this will do to Bucky. He wonders what will happen if he takes Bucky's place tomorrow night and lets the old god of the valley have him instead. Honestly, he wonders how much of Bucky can it heal, physically and in his head. They'll get the chance to find out, he thinks; they're wanted, and maybe the church in the valley was the last place on Earth Steve ever thought he'd go back to but maybe that's why it's the perfect place. There are no cameras to dodge so the Tony Starks of the world can't track them and whatever it is that lives down there in the earth beneath them, Steve knows it will keep them safe. They won't be found there in the village that's never existed on a single map. They don't need to keep moving.

Up in the pulpit, earlier, Dechênes said this was the first day of the festival, so there were just five more to go. He guesses they'll make it through together. And when the festival is over, they'll figure it out from there. 

Who knows: maybe this is where they'll stay. 

Maybe this is where they'll stay forever.


End file.
